The 2020 Archaeological Field School Has Been Cancelled

We are sad to announce that we have to cancel this year's Field School for the safety of our students and faculty. According to campus policies on conducting research on and off campus at this time, the logistics of the program make maintaining appropriate physical distancing impossible. We look forward to the 2021 Field School.

The CSU, Chico Archaeological Field School offers students hands-on training in the latest archaeological field techniques. The 2020 field school will take you to two distinct regions: the Northern Sierra Nevada of California and the Little High Rock Canyon of Northwestern Nevada. The course is taught in two ten-day rotations with a four-day break in between.

The first rotation will allow you to explore a village site on the shores of Concow Lake in the northern Sierra Nevada. This village was occupied before and after the time of Euro-American contact, and will shed light on the persistence of Native culture during a time of tremendous upheaval. The second rotation takes place in the remote desert of northwest Nevada. At nearly 6,000 feet above sea level, students will excavate a rockshelter with buried deposits dating back over one thousand years ago. With a natural spring nearby, Wagontire Springs Cave likely served as temporary camp for prehistoric people hunting in the uplands above alkaline lakes in the basin. We seek to understand how people adapted to the desert landscape through changing climatic conditions.

Field schools are an important and necessary part of a degree and career in archaeology, and a valuable addition to a resume. The CSU Chico Field School will provide students with an extensive course of hands-on training in the following areas:

The field school is led by CSU, Chico professors Dr. Matt O’Brien and Dr. Carly Whelan. Both directors have experience in academic and cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology, so you will gain valuable experience in both realms.

Earn Academic Credit

Students will be enrolled in ANTH 380 or ANTH 480 through the CSU, Chico Regional & Continuing Education, and will earn 4 units for successful participation in the field school.

Field School Faculty

Matthew O'Brien

My primary focus in archaeology is the study of North American hunter-gatherers. While they are rare on the landscape today, this subsistence strategy accounts for over 99 percent of human prehistory. My current research projects include social organization of communal hunting through food sharing as seen through zooarchaeology. I am collaborating on the ongoing excavations of the La Prele Mammoth site near Douglas, Wyoming that are exploring the spatial organization of a proboscidean butchery and the associated campsite. Finally, I have begun exploring Great Basin hunter-gatherer land use patterns in Northwest Nevada as part of the Archaeological Research Program.

Carly Whelan

My research examines prehistoric hunter-gatherers, with a focus on the pre-contact lifeways of the people of California. This dynamic region was densely populated and linguistically diverse, with an economy based entirely on wild plant and animal foods. I study change in the subsistence economies, settlement patterns, and exchange networks of the central and northern Sierra Nevada, with an interest in the role that women played in shaping these systems. I am establishing field sites in the Sierra Nevada foothills to examine shifts in storage practices over time and am also working with our local Native communities to build experimental storage granaries using traditional techniques to store a variety of Native plant foods. In addition, I serve as Faculty Coordinator of the Northeast Information Center (NEIC), which houses the records for over 40,000 archaeological sites in northeast California.